When I first started on my PhD at the beginning of 2016, lots of things had already been done over the previous year, by Abbie Case and Joanne Horton, both MSc students from MMU, and I was really excited to do more over the next few years. We started by advertising the project and collecting a lot of data from bat carers, who sent us many pictures of bat wings and swabs from injured bat wings. We will start analysing the swabs in the autumn to find whether traces of cat DNA can be found. We have also looked at the anatomy of the bat wing and have found that the fewest number of vessels and lowest vessel density were in the plagiopatagium section of the wing, which is closest to the body. We have also looked at all the photographs sent by bat carers and found that the most tears also occur in the plagiopatagium. Unfortunately, this part is the worst part to be injured, as its healing process will be slower than that of the other wing parts, due to its fewer blood vessels. We have also filmed seven bats so far at Lower Moss Wood Wildlife Hospital (three healthy bats, two bats with an injury on one wing, and two bats with an injury on both wings). Preliminary data has shown that there are some significant differences in bats with wing tears, for example the body orientation is affected in bats with two wing tears. We are really looking forward to go back this year with MSc student Charlotte Mead for more filming.
As well as getting together all these preliminary analyses, I have also presented my work at the National Bat Conference and the internal postgraduate research conference at Manchester Metropolitan University. You may have also seen us presenting our work, and recruiting bat carer helpers, at the Mammal Society Conference. I have thoroughly enjoyed this year, and can’t wait to receive more samples this summer to see if our predictions still hold true. If you would like to get involved please let us know on the website, or email: [email protected]
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We are really happy to welcome Charlotte (Charly) Mead to our Bat Research Group at MMU. Charlotte is an MSc student and will be studying the effect of wing tears on flight behaviour for her project. She had a great start to her project by presenting her ideas, and our first results, at the Mammal Society Conference this weekend. We had lots of interest and also managed to hand out about 50 bat packs to interested carers too.
If you would like to help Charly with her project, we would love to hear from you. We would love to film healthy bats and those recovering from tears. All we need is a room larger than 2.5 metres long. Please do email us if you would like to help, and then the bat team with Charly, can come along to film, and also share our videos with you. We have a high-tech, high-speed filming set-up (see post below) and we can measure wing angles, speeds, symmetry and body orientation. We have the first results from our filming at Lower Moss Wood and it seems that the body orientation of bats with tears is clearly altered, and they also move their wings less, and less often. However, these are just our preliminary findings. With some more samples from Charly's study, we hope to really understand the effect of wing tears on flight. Please do let us know if you would like more details, or would like to get involved: [email protected] |
AuthorBat Research Group at Manchester Metropolitan University Archives
October 2017
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